Out of sheer geeky (and yes, personal) interest, and not merely wanting to parrot the “they’re not addicted they just need to get a life” post, I decided to do the most cursory of checks to see what the latest in literature said about gaming and addictive behaviours (noting that it was a pity Mr. Bakker hasn’t opted — to my knowledge — to write up a case study on his observations)

I did find one fairly recently published article in the peer-reviewed journal of Cyberpsychology and Behaviour, published on November 4, 2008 called “Problematic Usage Among Highly-Engaged Players of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games“, by CHRISTOPHER S. PETERS, M.A. and L. ALVIN MALESKY, Jr., Ph.D.  While their efforts were targeted at individuals playing MMO’s, there were a number of interesting observations in this observational study of around 200 gamers who were playing World of Warcraft, who played on average 30 hours per week.

[emphasis mine; some paragraphs were broken up for readability]

These results suggest that the greater amount of time individuals spend playing World of Warcraft, the more likely they are to experience problems in their lives. The relationship is only moderate; therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that not everyone who spends a great deal of time playing experiences numerous or severe problems in their lives. 

This mimics common sense (for most gamers) I imagine, as there are highly functional gamers, and not all of them have problematic gaming behaviours — for example, gaming to the point of causing screw ups with their personal, financial, or family situations.

A number of different factors, such as personality, could contribute to this correlation. With regard to the personality characteristics, two trait correlations are of particular interest: neuroticism and agreeableness.

Based on these results, it is logical to suggest that one reason some individuals spend more time playing the game is to avoid face-to-face social situations in which they may lack the proper skills to foster good relationships. Furthermore, if the individual were rejected in these situations, it would likely cause them distress due to their difficulty in dealing with stressful events.

However, because extraversion is only weakly negatively correlated, it is probable that the individuals desire at least some amount of social contact. Therefore, the individuals may seek social connections in a safer environment: the environment of MMORPG guilds. This is evident when players become better friends with their online guild mates than with their “real-life” friends.

I had to look up the “formal” definitions of neuroticism and agreeableness, not having a background in psychology (and I use formal in quotes, because I found these definitions in Wikipedia).  At any rate the data suggests that gamers who tended to have more problematic behaviours tended to have a negative correlation with being agreeable — that is to say, they were “compassionate and cooperative” — and a positive one with being neurotic, which apparently means “emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress.”

These traits correlated highly with gamers who were thought to have problems with gaming in their lives.  And it goes on to the same conclusion that Mr. Bakker suggests in the article: that the core issue with gamers is not with what, perhaps, is recognized as a the formal issue of “addiction”, but perhaps, the real way that some personality types cope.  They may find it easiest to interact in digital environments than “real” ones, and therefore they choose to spend their time in places where they feel the most comfortable.

Interesting conclusion to their article: 

One significant limitation of this research is the possible defensiveness of the participants. Defensiveness is a possibility with all research that includes the use of self-report in that participants may attempt to appear socially desirable. As a result, participants may have acknowledged fewer problems or negative attributes than they really have. There is also a more global defensiveness with regard to online gaming in general, as exhibited by one guild leader who declined to allow his guild to participate:

“I don’t want any of you _expletive_ researchers creating problems with things where here is nothing wrong. Gaming does not need any more restrictions than there already are.” Thus, based on this and similar statements, it appears there may be concern among some gamers that research in the area could result in restrictions being made to online games.

Wow.  Defensiveness in online gaming?  Man, I have never heard of that before in online gaming, forums, or comments anywhere! :D  Actually, it seems like being defensive is part of the same ball park as “emotionally reactive”, so perhaps it makes complete sense.  Interestingly the survey above excluded everyone under the age of 18 — I do wonder how much more neurotic the sample would have been if it did include teenagers? 

The drama, in a nutshell, surrounded the fact that a few top Diggers (or, perhaps all of them) felt like that the new algorithm change inappropriately penalized them, and made it more difficult for them to promote stories for everyone to enjoy on the frontpage of Digg.

On this particular “emergency” episode of the DrillDown there was some talk about boycotting Digg and moving away from Digg altogether, as the algo change was thought to be a slap in the face of these Top Diggers who have put so much time and energy into Digg.

Well.

I had some thoughts at the time about the subject, but — and there’s no way for me to say this without sounding pretentious, so I’m just going to say it — it was really busy at hospital this week and I was trying to save some lives.

<shrugs>

Anywhoo, as someone who isn’t a top Digger, but someone who has been watching from a distance for some time, I couldn’t help but come up with a few thoughts (Let me preface this by saying that I know some of these Diggers, and they are fine human beings).  Having had to wait, it really distills down to one point.

Digg is bigger than all of them, and for the average visitor, there would probably be no material change if they left.

The biggest reason for this, I think, is that social news is such a big phenomenon now it doesn’t take many dedicated and active social news gatherers to find most, if not all, socially “acceptable” news in any of the popular genres of news.

Couple that with how easy it is to scan feeds via RSS readers, and the logical conclusion is that its a matter of time before any given story of any particular importance is found.

If the top tier diggers left, the second tier (let’s say the next 100) would likely find the same stories, if a little slower, they would grow their own fellowship or fans over time, and while there would be some idiosyncracies in some of their postings (perhaps a group of them have an axe to grind with, say, the evils of Best Buy, rather than the evils of Scientology), they would — literally — be the next “Top Diggers”.

And nothing would have materially changed for the average reader of Digg — who, I suspect doesn’t have many friends on Digg, doesn’t recognize the Digg “personalities” who are submitting, doesn’t actually submit news, but quickly scans for interesting tidbits while they’re at work or at school.

Where’s the proof in all of this?

Well, if the pipes are built right, you can find out for yourself if the quality of the stuff on Digg changes for your tastes by checking out the mash up for yourself.

What’s the alternative?

One way to get at the bottom of this is to get the current top 10 (or 20, or 50, or what have you) if they’re all in solidarity over the algo change, to in fact, do an experiment of their own.

Stop submitting for 24 hours.  Or 48 hours.  Or 72 hours.  Get them to tell their friends to stop using Digg if you want as well.

And let’s see the effect it has on the quality of the submissions, or, any other metric you like.  Engagement, visitors, what have you.

My guess is that nothing much will change from a quality point of view — mostly because many stories that they would have found will probably get found by someone else.  Oh, and that Digg is so big, and the average user so uncaring about this Drama that none of the other numbers will likely change either.

Hey, if anyone doubts this thesis, or thinks I’m out to lunch, that’s totally fine — and I’m happy to eat big ol’ slices of crow pie if need be.

But there’s a real easy way to prove it, and before I do chow down, I’d like to see that little experiment go ahead first.

Anyway, folks like Dave Cohn provide an interesting and important perspective because they have access to the inner “circle” of socially active submitters that most people aren’t usually privy to.

And I use the word “circle” deliberately, because the gist of his piece is that the relatively new “social network” aspect of Digg is propelling (pun intended) the use of instant messaging systems to promote their stories.  The worry, of course, is that the quality of the stories will suffer as what reaches the front page has more to do with the size and effectiveness of these self-promoting circles, than the actual quality of the stories themselves.

What I do wonder, however, is if this is really “gaming” Digg at all.

Last year, when stories about Digg gaming were running rampant the first time (and really, possibly the last time, as I wonder if anyone really cares as much these days), Jay Adelson was questioned about the effect of having “friends” as a function on Digg enabled this kind of “circle-digging” effect.  His answer, as I recall, was that he and Kevin wanted people to make friends, and to have people voting en bloc was an inevitable consequence of that.

Irrespective of whether or not there is a sophisticated “social network” engine behind something like Digg or not, when something like Digg gets big enough, there are real gains to gaming the system.

Front page Diggs get thousands of hits.  But that flash in the traffic-pan is almost immaterial.  What’s more important is that they also get dozens, perhaps hundreds of new backlinks in the process.  Now that Google is putting the smack down on  paid links (and paid reviews), easy “cheap” methods of generating organic links are getting harder and harder to come by.

Put simply, you can attach real dollar amounts to every front page digg, if you want to calculate the cost it takes to generate each inbound link (in time, or whatever unit cost you’d like), or, if you want, calculate the cost it would take to generate that amount of traffic by PayPerClick engine (albeit really untargeted traffic).

When there’s this amount of gain, I think it stands to reason that people will do whatever it takes to exploit a system.  If that system is based on votes, then yes — that means people creating sock puppet accounts, joining groups or creating lists of folks for the express purpose of “social news promotion”, where people vote for each other.

It isn’t new, its been happening, I’m sure in some form or another, for at least a year, and I am also sure that its not so much a function of the “social networking” aspect of Digg so much as a maturation of what Digg “can do” for any given website — and that more and more marketing folks (and I use that broadly to encompass anyone who wants to get these benefits) are cottoning on to this fact since December of 2006.

In many respects, with these kind of out-of-Digg, or “extra-social-network” promotional activities that are carrying on, I’m not sure solutions like “anonymizing” votes will do any good at all.  Private lists of people will know who to vote for, and will go ahead and do it as folks on the list point to specific stories, even if the authors are all “blinded” on Digg.

I started this post by querying if these kinds of activities were really “gaming” Digg or not.  One hand it obviously is.  But on the other hand, the answer could just as easily be “probably not” — and this is because of its a natural consequence of what happened at Digg, and an inevitable consequence of Digg getting to be as large and as influential (from a exploitable SEO point of view) as its become.

If you doubt the latter (in a larger sense), I’d respectfully point you to the $300M evaluation Digg is looking to cash out for.

Well, there isn’t a direct way of measuring that on StumbleUpon, and I suspect that part of the reason why there isn’t one list is to prevent gaming of the service. But that hasn’t stopped intrepid social-media-maven Muhammad Saleem from cobbling his own service together based on an not-as-yet-published API for StumbleUpon — and its called StumbleRank.

Long and short of it is that by inputting your StumbleUpon profile (or, perhaps, someone else’s), you can add that profile to a growing list of Stumblers, which you can sort based on a number of publicly available metrics, such as pages, photos, and videos stumbled. Most importantly, you can sort it by the number fans you might have (or, someone else might have).

StumbleUpon does have a page with the purported “Top Stumblers” in the community but its woefully incomplete as there are many Top Stumblers not included, and many alleged “Top Stumblers” who don’t appear to be Top Stumblers at all based on the number of pages and so on they may have Stumbled on in the past.

Mind you, its possible that there are hidden / unpublished metrics that propel some people into that last, and are at the same time penalizing others from appearing on that list, but until such metrics are theorized, having a transparent means of ranking makes a lot of sense to me.

I have a more detailed interview with Muhammad over at the BlogHerald which is worth checking out as we talked about his rationale behind StumbleRank, how gamers might use StumbleRank, and what his thoughts are about StumbleRank as a target for potential legal action (as a ‘derivative’ work).

All in all a great piece of work, and something I’m sure is only the first of many things to come for Mr. Saleem.

I think the obvious answer to many dilemmas are obvious: engage your children in age appropriate discussions about the games they’re playing; ensure that they understand the distinction between reality and fantasy; and lastly, be aware of what they’re actually playing.

The trickier thing, of course, will be to Walk the Walk when it comes to gaming’s siren’s call.

Will I be able to counsel my children about the important divide between work and play — while making sure I’m not shirking my own household duties to play a little extra Marvel Alliance?

Could I honestly ask my son to limit his time on the PC or gaming console, when I’ve had marathon Halo sessions myself — at the expense of other responsibilities?

I don’t really want to get into a discussion about how addictive gaming is, because I know that its not a theory. For me, its a fact. A deliciously awesome fact that my childhood memories are saturated with.

And yet, I wonder if my own ambiguity towards the issue has less to do with video games, and more to do with the anxiety of appearing human and vulnerable to your children.

I guess I’ll let you know as things develop. I have a little bit of time, after all, as my son is only six months old right now.  Not much, but a little bit. ;)

So, its no surprise to hear that the great minds behind the over-priced and under-gamed black behemoth at Sony came up with something new and drastic: an online community a la Second Life, called “Playstation Home”. It allows PS3 users to enter an on-line virtual world complete with avatars, a personal space to show off your online trophies, a place to “hang out” to play some virtual sports and so on. Videos and pics seem pretty cool.

But the question that should be asked is: Will it help sell more Playstation 3′s?

I don’t think so. By offering this extension to the gaming system, the Sony seems desperate to dilute what the Playstation brand is all about and that is *gaming*. From what I’ve seen and heard, while “Playstation Home” does enable you to keep track of your gaming exploits, its emphasis is a community beyond gaming.

And quite frankly, if people want online gaming they have a lot more (and better) frugal options than a $600 gaming console with an anemic selection of games (cough, cough WoW!).

I could see “Home’s” role as a retention mechanism to both bolster and strengthen people’s perceptions and enjoyment of the console once they’ve got it. But if “Home” does little to actually improve the actual on-line gameplay, such as the Xbox Live’s way of matching, keeping track of friends, and so on — and if Sony’s biggest problem is going to be simply selling the units in the face of horrendous press, “Home” is not going to help its bottom line all that much, if at all.

But what it does do is give a Sony a certain aroma that seems to grow stronger with every gaffe — and that’s the stink odor of desperation.

A Recap:
Gold Rush is a new reality show in which viewers at home (that includes you), will all be able to participate in weekly attempts at finding stashes of hidden of real gold scattered throughout the United States of America. Clues will be given in the form of short video clips distributed through websites such as AOL network sites such as Moviefone and Mapquest.com, but also scattered throughout a number of CBS owned media properties, including prime time series, such as CSI, and of course, Survivor (of which Mark Burnett is the creator).

Sure, its a Buzzword, but …
I have to admit, when I heard the elevator pitch/press release a few months ago, my jaded genx heart got a little stoked. It sounded *cool*. Little tips through the Internet. EVERYONE could play? GOLD? (arrr!) .

Then it got me thinking how similar the game mechanics were to what I read and blog about almost every day — the Web2.0.

Now granted, the “Web2.0″ is a buzzword that people still argue over, but let’s examine what the Gold Rush’s own game mechanics involves against what we I commonly think of when we I think of the web2.0

Spot the Similarities:

1. Audience participation: Gold Rush’s principle allure is that anyone can win because everyone’s invited to play. With the evolution of Web applications and rich internet experiences, the Web2.0 is about getting people involved in a way that has never quite been done before.
2. Sharing of information: In order to win, players will need to collaborate. Burnett’s clues will be notoriously difficult to solve on your own; the presumption is that by working together groups of people will be able to solve the clues each week. In the Web2.0, collaboration is the grease with which web applications simply could not run, and is a fundamental underpinning of which they are built upon. Think Digg, or Del.icio.us. More to the point (Buzzword Alert!), it employs the Wisdom of Crowds to solve problems that no single person can answer correctly.
3. Always on / Always Available: Just as in the Web2.0, where all you’ll need is a browser to carry your presonal information, calendar, contacts, and rich media, so will Gold Rush employ the same principles. The game will be delivering information and tips throughout the day — not just prime time, but even during working hours.
4. New Interactivity of an “Old” Medium: Web applications are driving the Web2.0, which with the popularity of frameworks like Rails and new combinations of older programming and scripting technologies to create AJAX, is creating a new experience for Internet users. Gold Rush is taking television, through a cleverly constructed marketing/game mechanic, in a similar direction. It will force participants (likely, necessarily in teams), to not just watch passively their favourite programs, but actively — and looking for tidbits, clues and other morsels of information that can further their quest for the gold in any given week.
5. Use of Rich Media: Gold Rush will be distributing its clues not on paper, not through television clips but video clips on the Internet, through AOL managed properties. In this vein, it takes advantage of the proliferation of broadband, think: Youtube and all its clones.

As funny and improbable as it is to think of Mark Burnett as a game design auteur, its probably just as improbable to think of him as a bleeding edge web2.0 guru.

Well, as improbable as it may be, I think he’s unwillingly done it: mashed up a new reality show with the underlying mechanics of what’s currently driving all of the hoopla, reams of VC investment, and talks of a a bubble 2.0 …

The Web2.0.